Monthly Archives: June 2014

Believe it or not, developing and running a massively multiplayer online game is one of the more complex tasks in the world of networking. Not only do you need to manage everything you’d ordinarily deal with while running a server, you’ve a whole plethora of additional tasks to tackle. These include (among others) cheat prevention, game balance, latency, game maintenance, and state management.

For this reason, it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that there’s actually a great deal one can learn by studying some of the more successful developers in the world of online gaming. How they run their servers – along with the mistakes they’ve made, both past and present – can serve as a great primer for any budding administrator, regardless of whether or not they’ve an interest in gaming.Read more »

According to a survey carried out last year, application developers are still somewhat ambivalent about whether or not they stand to benefit from cloud computing. It’s the same old song and dance we’ve heard on multiple occasions before; concerns that the cloud isn’t secure enough collide with fear of vendor lock-in, a dearth of optimized tools, and skepticism about cloud reliability.

Before we move on to talk about the advantages of cloud application development, it’s worthwhile to stop for a moment and consider the risks. Like it or not, there’s a chance that if one chooses the wrong vendor, one’s source code can be compromised – either through negligence or malice; such vendors could also derail the development process through downtime and poor performance. Similarly, failure to properly read through and understand one’s contract can lead to vendor lock-in.Read more »

Dedicated servers aren’t for everyone. The’re more expensive than other hosting options, and — depending on your host — require a more technical know-how than a shared hosting solution. That said, for the right business, a dedicated server is the perfect choice.